Butterfleye – The No False Alarm Monitoring Camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/butterfleye-smart-and-versatile-monitoring-camera#/story <comment><AUTHOR> Hi There,

I'd like to present to you Butterfleye and see what you all think. This is an attempt at introducing a whole new way of monitoring and surveillance that is home friendly.

Butterfleye is the only camera that is designed to ignore false alarms and save you time. Normally software is applied to video footage to detect different events such as motion or sound.

Butterfleye automates that process and simply video logs all activity and presents it in a newsfeed on the application on your smartphone.

By applying ABR or Activity Based Recording Butterfleye saves resources like energy, storage, and bandwidth as it does not require to be fully turned on and recording at all times like traditional security and or monitoring cameras.

More importantly it only records events so you do not have to sift through hours of footage to find the few seconds you care about.

Some people compare the Butterfleye camera with other IP cameras and CCTV on the market because it does the same thing, but really it is more about how it does it and why it does it that way.

We wanted to provide a better user experience for those who are interested in video monitoring. What do you all think of the technology behind our product?

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER2> How is it any better than Canary [0]? The image recognition, of course, but that's something that Canary can also do.

I think the biggest issue with Butterfleye is that it looks like a camera unlike Canary, which is more covert.

[0] [http://canary.is/](http://canary.is/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well we would not say that we are better than Canary. In fact we think Canary is a great security device. The reason Butterfleye does not look like a hidden camera or discrete is because we wanted it to be more home friendly and serve other purposes than security for example to be able to communicate with your home and people/pets inside your home while you are away.

Really our technology is what makes our solution more advanced and convenient to use.

1\. Canary is bound by AC power wires 2\. Canary will not work if your Wi-Fi happens to stop working. 3\. Canary will not work if you power happens to go out where you are located. 4\. Canary will give false alarms as it does not integrate infrared technology into their motion detector. 5\. Subscription fees are not liked by their customers and Butterfleye provides at least 24 hours of rolling storage for free. 6\. Butterfleye will connect through 3 different protocalls WAN/LAN and direct stream so you can take it camping or in the middle of no where and still work.

On top of all this the way we monitor is more efficient as we don not record empty rooms and take up energy, storage, and bandwidth doing so.

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much for the details comparison!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Firefox Color Gallery – Made with Native Node.js HTTP and React/Redux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JoshuaScript/Firefox-Color-Gallery <comment><USER2> The transition between pages takes a really long time considering how little content is on each page.</comment>


…and that's why you always ask for an email - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vanstee/and-that-s-why-you-should-always-ask-for-an-email-address-6a2deecd2d46

<comment><USER2> I was one of the 20 who had to email you but you reacted so quickly I don't think this will hurt much in the long run.

Probably like most people, I had a specific idea for how to use Firesize so when finally taking action it would have been SOP to check back with you again.

In fact, great job in showing agility with the classic startup skill: action -> mistake -> admit/recognize -> improve

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate it WhitneyLand. Thanks again for reaching out in the first place :+1:

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just to provide another explanation. I visited the firesize page and had no idea I was supposed to signup at all to use it. The example provides a way to append any URL to firesize.com, I assumed that was how it was used. What is the advantage of the Heroku signup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh gotcha. Yeah that's mainly for testing, but would be slow to use in practice since it's not behind a CDN. We'll probably start throttling that one, only for use on the homepage, but feel free to signup and use your own account for free.</comment></comment>


Spolsky: Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/why-circuit-city-failed-and-why-bh-thrives.html <comment><USER2> I love the CEO blaming the economy. When times are good, these weasels take home bonuses for their managerial success. But the moment things go wrong, they are right there blamestorming everyone and everything else.

Schmucks.

<comment><USER3> "blamestorming" - my new favorite word of the day.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that the word describes a particular kind of group behaviour where everyone is blaming everyone and everything except themselves. So I misused it to describe a CEO blaming other people, it would be more accurate to think of a management meeting where the CEO, PResident, and various VPs are all weaseling out of responsibility by trying to pin it on something else.

Vehemently!

A colleague introduced the phrase to me in conjunction with Hurricane factors. So walking into a meeting to discuss why a particualr release was late, he would whisper to me, "Stand by for a Force Three Blamestorm!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While B&H rarely has the _best_ online price, they always have a _fair_ price. Typically you can see other online retailers undercut B&H in price. However, B&H has the upper-hand in customer service and advice which, to me, is worth the extra premium. When comparing against regular brick and mortar stores, B&H beats them hands-down.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. A good example of not competing on price alone, but overall value. I'll gladly pay a little more to order from their website vs. some fly-by- night yahoo store.

Any time I'm in NYC I try to visit B&H just to absorb the atmosphere and play with all the awesome toys.

<comment><USER4> I've ordered several thousand dollars worth of equipment from them but have never been to their store. Would it be odd that I plan a trip to NY just to visit the B&H store?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not! Anyone who is a B&H fan should plan a pilgrimage to NYC at least once =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The most amazing thing is that the prices are so low that I don't even bother to comparison-shop anymore._

This is how I feel about Newegg.com. I used to be a daily visitor to pricewatch.com, which compares the prices of electronics, until I found myself regularly ending on up Newegg, and decided that it was easier to just hit newegg directly. Now I buy almost all my gear from them.

<comment><USER7> I feel the same way about Amazon. I find myself there for everything; books, MP3s, electronics, even parts for my bike. They are usually pretty reasonable price-wise, and since I have Prime, I know I will get my item in a day or so. It's wonderful. (No more dealing with places that have good prices, but ship your stuff whenever they feel like it, like a week after you order. With Amazon, you always know how long it will take, and that they are not absconding with your money.)

<comment><USER8> I must second the notion that amazon + prime gives me 85% of my online goods. Newegg is still better at most of the nuts and bolts computer hardware stuff but not by much. I was frequenting pricewatch but found it a waste of time to evaluate a new vendor for such a marginal price difference(am I going to get my parts, are they going to sell my credit card number, How long is it going to take for ground to get to me, etc....)

Overall happy with paying a bit(not much) more for a lot more convenience and speed.(newegg gets to me in a day if I purchase by noon to noon-thirty, amazon in two.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I had read on the Consumer Reports website that Circuit City's liquidator had actually raised the price on many items for the going-out-of-business 'sale.'"

That I can believe. I made the mistake of going in to Circuit City's going- out-of-business sale to find a wide screen TV, only to find they were all at least $200 more than I'd spend at Sam's Club or Costco. It seemed they had no care if they sold any merchandise whatsoever.

<comment><USER10> this is how pretty much every liquidator operates. if you see a "going out of business" sign, avoid it at all costs.

all the "good" stuff will be marked up to or past MSRP and then marked back down again to the level of their original costs just so that they can legally advertise huge-sounding discounts. they mark something up so that they can then put a "30% off" sticker on it and run an advertisement, despite the price not actually changing.

you won't find anything worth buying until the final days when they really do discount items. but by then, the "good" stuff is gone because the liquidators have tricked unwitting consumers into buying it up.

<comment><USER3> Don't confuse markup with discount. A $1 item that is marked up 30% and then given a 30% discount has a final cost of 91 cents.

<comment><USER10> good point, after re-reading i didn't word things how i meant. edited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> B&H - Knowledgeable sales people. Honest business practices. Lowest prices or competitive prices.

Circuit City - Clueless sales people, (I was once told that a laptop I was looking at "has to run vista because of the drivers that are installed"), dishonest business practices and prices that are guaranteed to be significantly higher than what you see in other places.

The question is will B&H become a victim of its own success? As Joel says in the article, he doesn't even comparison shop anymore. I've been using B&H for years, and while I don't comparison shop, I almost always go with B&H because of their terrific customer service and I always know what I'm getting (none of that annoying "well, you know this model doesn't come with a battery" bullshit).

My experience tells me that eventually something will change in the mindset of the org, either the guy calling the shots will start to cash in on those years of trust, or his son will take over and he will cash in, or they become a publicly traded company where the board members care more about next quarters profits than a long term sustainable business. I would wager Joel's article will accelerate that process.

That makes me wonder...perhaps the publicly traded corporate structure is not conducive to a company that wants to win on price, quality and customer experience.

<comment><USER12> Tell that theory to Apple's board. They seem to be doing alright.

<comment><USER13> The key, I think, is that Jobs is a strong enough leader to ignore his shareholders and the Street. Had they heeded the "conventional wisdom" of the financial press, Apple would have ceased as a going concern long ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FYI, the actual article is here:

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/why-circuit-city- failed...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/why-circuit-city-failed-and- why-bh-thrives_Printer_Friendly.html)

That will save you an interstitial ad and 30 seconds of page load before the "printer friendly" link shows up.

Somebody might want to re-point the item.

<comment><USER15> That format may be printer-friendly, but it is significantly less readable on- screen. The text fills the browser window, making each line far too long to read comfortably.

Bloated pages (both visually and in terms of file size) are a problem, but linking directly to printer-friendly pages is not a suitable fix, IMHO.

Avoiding advertising also bothers me (even more than the actual advertisements bother me) in general, because I like information, and information generally costs money to acquire - especially high-quality, reliable information. Newspapers and their investigative journalism appear to be going away, and that makes me sad.

Note: I'm not familiar with Inc. magazine, so discussing quality journalism may or may not be entirely relevant in this context.

<comment><USER16> > The text fills the browser window, making each line far too long to read > comfortably.

This is easily rectified by a single click and drag to resize the browser window to your preferred column width.

I for one much prefer print links for reading articles.

<comment><USER17> I would rather click zero times and just read the damn thing.

If you don't like ads, block them. I like well formatted text that doesn't require user intervention every time I go to a new page. That's sort of the entire fucking POINT of web design.

<comment><USER16> > I like well formatted text that doesn't require user intervention every time > I go to a new page. That's sort of the entire fucking POINT of web design.

I totally agree. Unfortunately, many commercial pages present poorly-formatted text framed by blinking or brightly-colored distractions. I exercise a bit of user intervention to load the print link -- I just want the text, and I can size the column(s) easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "...in order to reduce shoplifting and employee theft..."

Shoplifting, maybe. Employee theft, no. The Hasidim already have the world's best deterrent to employee theft: you are banned for life from the community. Period. No warnings. No discussion.

Imagine if wall street had that rule.

<comment><USER19> I am sure that its just the owners who are Jews. Employees would be regular folks, and theft just means getting fired - no different from other stores.

<comment><USER20> I think all employees are Jewish as well, or at least I haven't seen a non Hasidic Jewish guy behind the counter any of the half dozen times I've been in the store.

<comment><USER21> While the majority of the salespeople and staff are jews, there are also plenty who are not. All walks of life-- anyone you'd normally see on Ninth Avenue is represented on the B&H staff.

(including that snotty bastard in the studio lighting department-- B&H salespeople can be a little brusque)

I've probably spent upwards of $10k there over the years-- just bought $200 in grip on Sunday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if someday, someone will ask why Inc failed, and the answer will be that they put big splash screen ads in front of articles.

I love this article. Thanks for posting it wyday.

</comment><comment><USER23> Something missing from this article and the commentary: B & H specializes in professional a/v equipment. Sure, they sell to the general public and they sell many consumer-level items as well.

But go look at their web page: <http://www.bhphotovideo.com/> "The Professional's choice' - lots of high end cameras and camcorders, and so forth. A majority of their customers are highly knowledgeable as well, and they have a long-established reputation in the pro film/video community as a reliable supplier. That means they can sell a lot of items with a huge markup, because the customers are not looking for the best deal, but are willing to pay more for both customer service and equipment with lots of features. Although B&H caters to the general consumer, they probably don't make their biggest profits in that sector.

This is a very significant difference, and rather undermines the analysis in the article. It's like comparing a Ferrari dealership with a Ford one, or a professional medical supply business with a drugstore chain. There are useful lessons to be learned, but they're very different business models which (as commented) don't necessarily scale to different markets. If B&H were primarily targeting the general consumer, the overhead costs of educating every potential buyer would skyrocket.

Incidentally, the bit about the item being delivered to the counter where it is inspected, and then delivered to the point of sale etc. gave me quite a chuckle. Minus the high-tech and conveyer belts, this was _exactly_ how department stores in the Soviet Union operated when I visited there in the 1980s. In fact it was one of the things you'd find in guidebooks - 'those crazy commies - they hate capitalism so much that they make the process of buying something wildly inefficient!' I would never have imagined I'd see this model praised in the pages of _Inc._

<comment><USER24> But it is efficient. It's like the system in Starbucks (there's a company that knows efficient) rather than the coffee shop where you have 6 people fighting over a single coffee machine and then the same six fighting over the till.

<comment><USER23> True, but that's a process rather than a normal retail model. I mean, compared to pick something off the shelf and take it to the register.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> B&H is a fine store, but comparing them to Circuit City is not apt. They operate more like Amazon than any brick-and-mortar store -- the vast majority of their product is shipped online.

And customer service isn't exactly what comes to mind when thinking about B&H. The operation is run to be efficient and maximize profit not to enhance the "customer experience", though often the two intertwine.

They've found a good niche but if they tried to put one of these stores in every city across the country, as they say, "it wouldn't scale".

<comment><USER26> Why exactly wouldn't it scale? The challenge is to make sure other stores are run in the same dedicated fashion and not by some dimwit that only hires other dimwits in order to cut costs. Retail chains seem to become prone to this once the whole organization gets big enough to put in place metrics that measure store performance mostly on a revenue basis and those in charge start to manage by the metrics instead of looking at reality because there is no more incentive for them to do just that.

<comment><USER25> It just doesn't make sense to add more operating costs when your product is shipped online.

But there's also the place it has in the community. From their Wikipedia article (so take it for what it's worth): "Surpassed only by the Diamond District in terms of Orthodox employment, the company is a vital part of the community's financial health, with hundreds of Orthodox Jews on staff."

That doesn't scale either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a strange article to give much attention.

He states that he doesn't actually know how B&H is doing financially so there isn't any proof that they are a successful business other than his description of personal experience. He states that they are not open for business as much as they could be which I would find annoying as a customer. The site shuts down that often? You gotta be kidding me.

Any business trying to compete on thin profit margins and/or is too dependent on loans to keep their business running is certainly not going to thrive in this economy. Unfortunately, I don't think customer service will be the deciding factor for many companies right now.

But yeah, as far as personal experience I avoided Circuit City too as the only experiences I had were so negative. I wouldn't say other stores like Best Buy have any more than a tolerable customer experience on average.

<comment><USER28> You can browse the site on Saturdays -- you just can't place an order until sundown (sunset? I don't know the rules).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love the phrase "aggressively unknowledgeable".

I have ordered much stuff from them; would love to visit them in person sometime.

</comment><comment><USER30> I could not read that article due to the ad with the dude with the bug eyes staring straight at me. It annoyed and irked me. Yes may seem odd, but maybe Im not alone with this thought?

<comment><USER31> That's not an ad, it's a picture of the author - Joel Spolsky.

<comment><USER27> You mean that dude's name isn't "Related Content"? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've purchased a lot of gear from B&H. This article is a little inaccurate, B&H opened in the late 1960s, my father bought his Nikon F FTn from them through the mail in 1969 and I still have the receipt for it.

</comment><comment><USER33> 'Sony Guts!'</comment>


Has NASA Recorded a Spaceship Near Mercury? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5865808/has-nasas-satellite-captured-an-unidentified-object-near-mercury

<comment><USER2> Another question to which the answer is no.</comment>